Question: Would short reads work in the cozy mystery market?
Answer: We conducted an extensive research study of the cozy mystery market earlier this year. Looking at some 14,000 books, we compiled a “virtual” bestseller list 6,395 cozy mysteries. Only 8% of all those cozy mystery books were short reads. In the Top 20, the short reads quota was zero. That is not meant to say that cozy short reads will not work for you, however, it is a clear indication that cozy readers prefer “normal” books in terms of page count.
Question: What is the average page length of top-ranking cozy mystery books?
Answer: It is always dangerous to talk about averages because they can be distorted by extreme values. It is better to answer the question by looking at the distribution of e-book page lengths in a genre. The graph shows such distribution for 100 top-ranking cozy mystery books. You can see that the majority of books fall into the two brackets from 200 to 230 pages. The average value for the so-called Amazon Kindle “estimated print length” is 249 pages (excluding the top/bottom 10% outliers.)
Get more information about the full Cozy Mystery e-Book Market Study here.
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